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33 thoughts on “Bracket Alpha – Round 1 – Polls 5-8”

Listened to all of them and voted as follows:
K-ON!! – Go! Go! Maniac [This was tough, since I like both of these songs about equally. In the end, I just went with my gut on it.]
Paranoia Agent – Yume no Shima Shinen Kouen [Pretty easy pick, as I’m a fan of Hirasawa Susumu. The Geass song wasn’t bad, but comparatively, it just didn’t seem special.]
Kannazuki no Miko – Re-sublimity [This is an example of a song I hadn’t heard just directly beating one I like and expected to vote for, so I was surprised. Then again, I do like Kotoko songs, and especially the more upbeat electronic ones.]
Gosick – Resuscitated Hope [Resuscitated Hope probably wins here because I’ve just had more exposure to it, That’s not to say that Yakusoku wa Iranai was bad, of course. It just feels like Resuscitated Hope had more of what I wanted to hear right then.]

I could tolerate Go Go Maniac when i watched K-ON but that was because the anime was nice. As a stand alone, can’t take it.

For me, Paranoia Agent sounds better, hands down. Re-sublimity and Oath sign are on par but i love oath sign’s first 10 secs even though the parts following didn’t build on the opening (kind of like Last Inferno). Yakusoku wa Iranai’s bagpipes and light airy song wins it

Go Go Maniac was an easy vote. It’s a much more technically interesting song. Platinum disco is fairly simply though catchy, but has an awful bridge.

The Code Geass song is full cheese. I’m not too enthused by the Paranoia Agent song, but it’s interesting enough.

I refuse to vote for any LiSA song (though I don’t know how much better it is to vote for a KOTOKO song).

Gosick vs. Escaflowne was probably the most difficult vote here. If it was on vocals alone, I’d vote Resuscitated hope in an instant. But the electric guitar and the instrumentation is hard to take seriously alongside those vocals. With the Escaflowne song, nothing was necessarily as ear-catching as the Rescucitated Hope vocals, but all the pieces fit together a lot better.

1. Although the music of K-on’s Ho-kago Tea Time isn’t really my cup of tea, I’m pretty cool with it for the most part. Still, ‘Go! Go! Maniac’ makes my ears bleed! The way it’s sped up reminds me of a Chipmunks song! Platinum Disco it is.

2. As much as I want to vote for ‘Yume no Shima Shinen Kouen’ and show the w̶o̶r̶l̶d̶ anisphere my music street cred, ‘World End’ is one of those rare songs alongside ‘Liberia Me from Hell’ and ‘Brave Blue’, that literally causes me to jump out of my chair and fist pump the sky! There is no way I could vote against it.

3. ‘Re-sublimity’ is the first new to song to me and is pretty fantastic example of atmospheric/trancy electronica, which has definitely piqued my interest in Kannazuki no Miko. Oath Sign sounds like every other Fate Zero track I’ve heard, trying far too hard to come across all brooding and dark. Ultimately it leaves me pretty cold.

4. Say what you like about Gosick as a show, but you have to admit there are some pretty great songs attached to it. ‘Resuscitated Hope’ isn’t quite as impressive as Risa’s ‘Destine Histoire’, but I feel pretty happy voting for it over ‘Yakusoku wa Iranai’.

1. Gosick is p. lame, sure.
2. No, I didn’t think the songs were that great. This is probably the best from the lot though.
3. I feel pretty sad that said over-produced clunk of garbage is leading Yakusoku wa Iranai by a large margin at this point, but I guess it just means the end of an era is upon us.

Come now, no need for sour grapes. Fine, Probably ‘ok-good’ would be a more appropriate description of the music in Gosick; they’ll never make any of my top 20 lists, but I’d hardly call it garbage. Over-produced, sure, but that’s an issue I’ve learned to hand-wave with anime music in general.

Honestly, despite falling into anime during the late 90’s, very few songs of that decade really resonates with me, unless they were aping the style of another era. It’s a rather sad admission, I know, and one that doesn’t apply for shows of the 70-80’s. Maybe one day I’ll develop an appreciation for that decade. Not today though.

Stylistically anime theme songs (discounting obvious tie-ins) have been following the styles prevalent to what people like today more so than older styles. It’s possibly one reason behind the recency bias documented by one of the blog posts mentioned so far. Another one is that anison today generally have better production value than before because it has developed as an industry WRT to the music industry in general. Like I said, it’s about the change of times.

I don’t know if anime music is overproduced as a general rule, but it does happen occasionally and I suppose it’s reasonable to expect a higher % of them to be the case. It’s kind of telling if you are able to hand-wave it. 😉

Damn, Resuscitated Hope v Yakosoku was a lot closer originally.. Gosick’s is all around pretty decent but I just really love the chorus of Escaflowne, enough to pick it. I hope Re-Sublimity can hang on. I love K-On as a show but nearly all the music is terrible lol, no idea how ppl can honestly prefer Go Go Maniac over Platinum Disco.

Putting Yume no Shima Shinen Kouen against World End is pretty painful for a first round bout because those are easily two of my favorite anime OPs. However, the decision wasn’t too hard between the two since I don’t enjoy World End as much without the visuals as compared to Yume no Shima Shinen Kouen.

Never heard the Kannazuki no Miko song before, but damn, that’s a nice upbeat track with lovely vocals. I’m interested to see how far it goes provided it makes it out of this first round.

I’m very pleasantly surprised with polls 2 and 3 so far! I assumed both FLOW and Oath Sign are more aligned with the average otaku’s musical taste than their competition. I guess there’s still hope for me agreeing with the results of the tourney, though only time will tell if the standings remain as they are.

Paranoia Agent’s OP just oozes creativity, and I don’t know why I don’t listen to it more often than I do. As for Re-sublimity, well, that tune takes me back to my early days of otakudom when I was first discovering I’ve Sound (and yuri, for that matter). I’m definitely a sucker for I’ve (especially their earlier stuff), and I think Re-sublimity is one of their better anime productions. Not to mention, it’s relatively unique in its atmospheric quality, which I love. On the other hand, this is the only KOTOKO song that made it in? wtf?

I wasn’t familiar with either song in poll 4, but I liked the Gosick one immediately. Maybe I should watch the anime sometime.

Alrighty now. First of all I want to say that most of these songs suffer from being far less interesting once divorced from their opening animations. Let’s start from the top:

Platinum Disco is just not as interesting without Tsukihi’s little dance. I even was imagining it in my head as the thing was playing but I have to say I was impressed how well the each of the Monogatari songs is written to cater to strengths of their vocalists (or I should say Vocalists characters since Iguchi’s normal singing voice is nothing like this). On the flip side we have Go Go Maniac! which I feel is much more musically interesting even in the tv-size stream. Adding in the bridge and guitar solos of the full version rounds out the song well. I however have listened to the PandaBoY remix of the song so much that I expect the record skip at the end of each line. Highly recommended.

Paranoia Agent’s OP is the more interesting song all around. It’s not my favorite work from Hirasawa Susumu. It’s a strangely weighted song that has a recurring themes but not anything I would call a “chorus” or “verses”. It feels unbalanced in that sense but it works with Paranoia Agent. World End is pretty generic but I will say it goes great with the OP animation in Code Geass R2. It has a certain finality to it that I notice in lots of songs that enter their final cour. Like Sakura in Eureka Seven or even Utauyo Miracle from K-On!!.

Oath Sign is pretty uninteresting until you get to the choruses and the “love-em-or-hate-em” almost angrily yelled vocals give the song lots of power. My problem with RE: Sublimiity is it takes too long for the song to get going and the vocal parts sound like a different song from the first minute. Not dramatically different, but this is a problem I have with a lot of I’ve Sound compositions, they create an interesting opening hook that gets you excited for the song and then write relatively downbeat or generic chorus that doesn’t match with what the song was building up to previously. Kotoko gives a great performance on the choruses but I feel like they were built for a different song. However I still think Sublimity is the better song

@Omo I warned you about that Resuscitated Hope. I told you man! I told you about Resuscitated Hope. That being said I will concede that Resuscitated Hope is somewhat overproduced; the guitar solo the first time I heard it made me laugh out loud, but I would argue that Yakusoku wa Iranai somewhat underproduced. Is 2:00 to 2:14 supposed to be a bridge? First of all this was Maaya’s debut single and her vocals lack the same nuance as some of her later work. Furthermore I feel like this particular song is lacking in nuance from Yoko Kanno’s side as well; it just doesn’t do much or go anywhere. Resuscitated Hope has a really generic rock backing track but Komine Lisa’s vocals are undoubtedly better and the lyrics during the choruses have a nice flow that matches with her voice. Yakusoku wa Iranai is a milestone in Maaya’s career and in anisongs in general but I think Resuscitated Hope is the better song.

You did warn me and I didn’t think much of it. It’s just not that interesting of a track after the first listen. In that sense I don’t expect it to survive far anyway to make a difference in the bracket.

I appreciate a lot for you to talk about GO GO Maniac. Thing is, all three K-ON OPs are musically interesting, but it’s very hate-or-hate because of the context and because people can’t stand Toyosaki’s vocals.

Both Platinum Disco and Go Go Maniac have vocals that are too moe for me. I agree with Omo that Go Go Maniac is musically more interesting – Platinum Disco was ludicrously simplistic – but melodically I find the K-On song completely unappealing and vocally near intolerable. Platinum Disco’s melody also sounds a bit fresher due to its oriental-flavoured melody – parts of it sound like it could be used for Chinese New Year celebrations, so though I’m a bit puzzled by how highly regarded it is (it’s the first time I’ve heard it, so perhaps Omo’s right in that it’s far less interesting when divorced from its context), it gets my vote.

I also don’t like the Paranoia Agent as much as most people seem to, but voted for it cos it’s certainly more interesting than the bland Code Geese song.

Oath Sign vs Re-sublimity is the matchup that gave me the most headache. They’re my top 2 songs in this set, and there’s not too much to choose between them. Decided to go with Re-sublimity in order to try and make up for the advantage that Oath Sign has for being from a more popular and recent anime. An upset in the competition is overdue, and though I had high hopes for the ParaKiss OP, that has the misfortune of going up against a gimmicky track with bundles of novelty appeal *sigh*, so I’m pinning my hopes on this one now.

The Gosick song and the Escaflowne OP is also quite close. The Gosick song started promisingly, but can’t seem to keep my attention for long. I didn’t like the main melody of the Escaflowne song as much, but the whole song comes together well, with the instrumentals adding a lot to the track, and Maaya Sakamoto’s vocals has a delicate charm to it that I’m partial to. Went for Escaflowne in the end – the oldies need more love 😀

BAR1P5: Platinum Disco, though the All That Jazz version of Go! Go! Maniac is always in my playlist.
BAR1P6: Yume no Shima Shinen Kouen. Feels different and very pleasant to hear.
BAR1P7: Re-sublimity. No specific reason.
BAR1P8: Resuscitated Hope. No specific reason.

1. I find the two songs boring, but at least Paradise Disco didn’t give me an headache…

2. Despite I truly like World’s End, I’m an huge fan of Susumu Hirasawa and have plenty of expectations for him. Moreover, his songs reach my heart much more than Code Geass…

3. I didn’t know Re-sublimity but I find it very refreshing. I think Oath Sign is probably more elaborate or whatever but Re-sublimity remembers me of my first glimpse of japanese music and that’s what I loved. So, I’ve decided to go for it.

4. The main reason of why I watched Escaflowne was because of the soundtrack. And I just love everything in it. But man, the Gosick’s song was awesome. When I listen to this song and close my eyes, I almost feel like I’m going to an other world and Escaflowne just can’t beat that.
Resuscitated Hope is by far the best song since the beggining of this poll.